You use a password + salt and hash them for creating new password?How did you manage to enter a password without access to any hash functions? Or you remember the hashes?

The few most important hashes I already remember. I also have my website with simple hash calculator in javascript and virtual keyboard.

Quote

I prefer to simply do not use a passwords.

Of course, I absolutely agree. But do you prefer to use *nothing* than passwords? It is the main concern I'm speaking again and again here. I'm ABSULUTELY agree with you that passwords are not good enough and I use PAM and private/public keys everywhere it is possible. But I will use password rather than leaving my money in plaintext. Agree?

Quote

I am wait for your answer and we compare our methods.

I didn't say it is not possible or that YOU cannot do that. I see that on bitcoin forum are 90% people geeks and 10% libertarians (which are not both geeks and libertarian). So you probably know how to do memory overflow. But I'm telling you there are tens of thousands of sysadmins which does not know how to do memory overflow but know how to do copy&paste. Again, passwords are better than nothing.

I can only agree on that.Actually, wallet.dat is like a vault with the door open big.

Anyone that gain a physical access on your computer, or can execute something on it could theorically transfert all you wallet away.

We need some sorts of securisation.

You could suggest for example that when generating the private key, the last X digits are show to the user to store somewhere else, and are not stored in wallet.dat.This way, you need both the password AND the wallet.dat to do anything.Password is stored nowhere on computeur, and is just used to complete private key when signing payments.

You use a password + salt and hash them for creating new password?How did you manage to enter a password without access to any hash functions? Or you remember the hashes?

The few most important hashes I already remember. I also have my website with simple hash calculator in javascript and virtual keyboard.

Yeah! Well we found a breach in your security strategy

Actually, you either have to remember passwords-hashes (but you can not remember a lot of hashes), or hash them on computer under your control (then you can just write down your password on this computer without any hashing), or give your password to someone else's computer to get the hash what you need (totally insecure method).

Like I said, you can simply encrypt the home dir with the same result.

Quote

Quote

I prefer to simply do not use a passwords.

Of course, I absolutely agree. But do you prefer to use *nothing* than passwords?

Don't juggle! I suggest using one password instead of several useless annoing passwords.

Quote

It is the main concern I'm speaking again and again here. I'm ABSULUTELY agree with you that passwords are not good enough and I use PAM and private/public keys everywhere it is possible. But I will use password rather than leaving my money in plaintext. Agree?

Quote

I am wait for your answer and we compare our methods.

I didn't say it is not possible or that YOU cannot do that. I see that on bitcoin forum are 90% people geeks and 10% libertarians (which are not both geeks and libertarian). So you probably know how to do memory overflow. But I'm telling you there are tens of thousands of sysadmins which does not know how to do memory overflow but know how to do copy&paste. Again, passwords are better than nothing.

You are responsible of the security of your data. So there is no "best practice".

Poor argument. Not all people can be an experts in safety. Why not to help people with transparent encryption of wallet.dat? It should improve security a lot.

Sure you can do that. But in a separate project. The whole point of bitcoin is not to depend on someone else trust for security. Therefore, I don't care if some people are unable or unwilling to be responsible for the security of their data. Those people could just as well use only mybitcoin.com.

If you want you can create a software that will wrap the headless bitcoin client and add a nice security layer around it. But there is no reason to put any of it inside the bitcoin client itself.

All that said: As my personal bitcoin wallet gets more valuable, I get more nervous. I would like to be able to export some of the value in my wallet onto a USB thumb drive and then put that thumb drive in my safe deposit box (along with a backup, gpg-encrypted copy that I'd keep in the fire safe in my basement).

So this is easy, right? Quit bitcoin, rename wallet.dat to wallet.dat.orig. Start bitcoin again, it will create a new wallet.dat with a new address. Write it down, quit bitcoin. Rename the new wallet.dat to wallet.dat.safe. Rename wallet.dat.orig back to wallet.dat, start bitcoin, send most of your BTCs to the new address you just wrote down. Voilà. Start up again with wallet.dat.new and watch your savings roll in. It's much easier if you do it on two separate computers of course. Encrypt & backup wallet.dat.safe and tell no-one about it. You could even print out a uuencoded version of the encrypted file and store it on your bookshelf. Me, I'd be mostly nervous about storing in some communal wallet.dat (as I understand mybitcoin does, am I correct?). It'll be fine until the day comes that BTC1 = US$lots, be that either through dollar hyperinflation, BTC market growth or both. Imagine how upset you'd be if some employee of your backup service transacts everybody's btc to themself?

Typing a password every time you use your bitcoin wallet is like putting padding your car's steering wheel instead of wearing a seatbelt. It might make you feel safer, but it is a false sense of security.

Good security is hard. If you're not computer savvy, then you've probably already got spyware and trojans on your system, and running bitcoin on a system infested with spyware and trojans is a bad idea. Period.

[...]

Another analogy: I keep most of my money in the bank; I don't have piles of cash or gold in my house. I will do the same for my bitcoins, keeping only enough in my online, connected, possible-to-hack wallet to use day-to-day.

I like your analogies. But to build up on them, don't you have a lock on your home door? Even if you don't keep all of your money at home, you may still want to keep the small amount you have inside it somewhat secure. Granted, it's not "true" security (but nothing is, your online bank can also be compromised), but if a simple password encrypted wallet prevents stealing the wallet when the bitcoin application isn't started, why not include it? It would at least prevent most script kiddies to attempt simple scams.

A smartphone-sized piece of hardware used exclusively for Bitcoin. It would have an aggressive firewall that allows no communication except for the Bitcoin protocol and perhaps a simple way to receive Bitcoin addresses from the web/ bluetooth/camera. Automatic wallet encryption would mean that you have to enter a password before each transaction, but that's no more incovenient than using a credit card. Perhaps it could include a fingerprint reader?

The bitbox would be a way to make strong security accessible to the non-geek user.

Web wallet providers are not a satisfactory alternative IMO. Except for small amounts of BTC.

A smartphone-sized piece of hardware used exclusively for Bitcoin. It would have an aggressive firewall that allows no communication except for the Bitcoin protocol and perhaps a simple way to receive Bitcoin addresses from the web/ bluetooth/camera. Automatic wallet encryption would mean that you have to enter a password before each transaction, but that's no more incovenient than using a credit card. Perhaps it could include a fingerprint reader?

The bitbox would be a way to make strong security accessible to the non-geek user.

Web wallet providers are not a satisfactory alternative IMO. Except for small amounts of BTC.